


Two

by aritzen



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-11
Updated: 2017-09-01
Packaged: 2018-12-13 23:59:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11771184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aritzen/pseuds/aritzen
Summary: Tetsurou has ideas about what his soulmate should be like. His ideas and reality don't match.





	1. One

This was how twelve-year-old Kuroo Tetsurou imagined he would meet his soulmate: their eyes would meet, the angels would sing, and the full spectrum of colors would spread from the center until it filled every nook and cranny of his achromatic world. They would declare their love for each other and then ride into the sunset and live happily ever after. 

Needless to say, that was not how it happened. 

A fortune teller had told him a long time ago that he was one of the few lucky ones to live in the same period as their soulmates. If fate was kind, he might even find his soulmate. He would know if he did, because that would be the moment his colorless world became colorful. He was disappointed that his soulmate wasn’t Kenma or the beautiful, long-haired senpai who headed the student council, but that was okay because life would be too easy otherwise. Tetsurou liked challenges. (Except art class. Art class was a pain.) 

It was with this optimism that he started middle school. No one he met transformed his world, but once again, that was okay because while he liked his new classmates and teammates, he didn’t _like_ -like them. They didn’t fit the image of his One True Love, which would be someone who shared his interests, knew what he was thinking, and laughed at all his jokes. He knew this person existed. 

What he didn’t know was that soulmates were two halves split from one and that they sought each other not the way rivers flowed into seas but the way yin and yang completed the taijitu. Unless there were two to begin with, what he had, his other half would lack, and that included the visual sign of encountering each other. So if he blinked—and he did—not even the most benevolent of gods could stop fate from being cruel through its act of kindness. 

The moment came when he was at the city gymnasium for his first ever volleyball tournament, his eyes roaming over the courts and the crowd with awe and excitement. There was a flash, and instinctively he shut his eyes. When he opened them again, blinking, he was looking at the polished floor. Something was different. It hit him then and there, as he stared at his uniform and his surroundings, that _the world had colors_. 

“Er, yes, it does,” said the other first-year on his team after he blurted out his discovery. “Are you okay?” 

He turned to his teammate to answer _yeah, I’m great_ when he noticed that the frames of his teammate’s glasses weren’t actually black. It was the darker of the two colors on the Mikasa volleyball. Blue? Was that blue? Blue looked funny on his teammate, but the fact that he was looking at his teammate meant he wasn’t looking at his soulmate. 

“Oh no!” he cried out, clutching his head, and frantically searched the area where he saw the flash. There was a team in the other Mikasa color on their way out after their match; a couple of volunteers mopping the floor; a team in black, waiting for the court, and their tiny libero in white, stretching... That libero stood out more than usual, but before Tetsurou could figure out why that was so, he heard himself telling his team that no, he didn’t forget anything, and yes, he was fine and could play in the match. 

So he screwed up and lost his best chance of finding his soulmate, but there was still plenty of hope. At least now he knew his soulmate wasn’t living in, say, Rio de Janeiro, which was as far as it could get from Tokyo. In fact, his soulmate must be a volleyball player at another school in the same ward—what luck! All he had to do now was to win every single game and pay close attention to the rest because he’d definitely come across his soulmate again that way. They would recognize each other, he was sure. It would be love at first sight. 

Alas, love and hate were opposite sides of the same coin. 

Like matter and antimatter, every soulmate must come with an anti-soulmate, Tetsurou reasoned three years later, shortly after he joined the Nekoma High School volleyball club. The fortune teller must’ve only told him half the story. Nothing else could explain Yaku Morisuke, the tiny libero in white, who looked like a harmless kitten but was ferocious both on court and off, digging more than enough balls to eliminate Tetsurou’s middle school team from their first ever tournament and thereby standing in Tetsurou’s way of finding his soulmate. 

As if that humiliating defeat wasn’t enough, they were now on the _same_ team, so Tetsurou couldn’t even get his revenge by crushing the other’s team and making it to nationals. What was worse: he was sure that the number of times he’d thought about winning against Yaku was more than the number of times he’d thought about his soulmate in the past three years. Not to mention, he spotted Yaku at every single middle school tournament afterwards even though their teams never played each other a second time. If that wasn’t the epitome of his anti-soulmate’s interference, he didn’t know what was. The nerve. 

It annoyed Tetsurou that Yaku was good at those receives, brutal as he was with his feedback and instructions, and it annoyed Tetsurou that Yaku seemed to like the opposite of what he liked since it made team bonding near to impossible. But mostly, it annoyed him that Yaku always reacted to his provocations with such an expressive face because he really shouldn’t find his anti-soulmate so much fun to tease. So much that sometimes he would express a false preference for the opposite just to witness the frown, the glare, and the curl of the other’s lip. The retort that followed was simply icing on the cake. 

And then one day, he discovered that he was in over his head and head over heels in love. 

It was the winter of their first year, a snowy morning. Tetsurou turned the corner and started climbing the steps to the school gate when he noticed Yaku in front, near the top, his red scarf particularly striking. Instead of calling out to Yaku or dashing past as he’d done a few times, he glanced at the wet snow and took the stairs two at a time as quietly as he could. Catching up with Yaku in the school grounds, he scooped up some snow, made a snowball, and chucked it at Yaku’s back. It was a declaration of war (of sorts), and he should be afraid of the sudden pause before Yaku looked over his shoulder with a dark expression, determined to retaliate, but Tetsurou just smirked. 

“Kuroo, you asshole!” Yaku shouted and lunged at Tetsurou. 

What happened next was a five-minute snowball fight, the two of them chasing after each other and dodging each other’s handful of snow, filling the courtyard with shouts and laughs. Tetsurou slipped, and Yaku caught him, tried to shove snow down his back. They stumbled and landed on top of each other in the snow. 

Tetsurou blinked at Yaku’s face against the white sky, at his brown hair dusted with snowflakes and his reddened cheeks. He could see, hear, feel their irregular breaths. His heart raced. He had met Yaku’s eyes before, of course, as the one on the receiving end of many focused, intimidating, withering looks, but this was the first time he _really_ looked and saw Yaku’s eyes. 

They were beautiful. 

He didn’t have the time to appreciate them further because Yaku tossed snow onto his face and rolled off him, taking away the weight, the warmth, and something else. He sat up and watched Yaku march toward the gym. Then when his chest tightened, when he felt this crazy urge to run up, hug, and kiss Yaku, he knew he was completely and utterly screwed.


	2. Two

This was how fifteen-year-old Kuroo Tetsurou dealt with the realization that he was in love with his anti-soulmate: maybe if he ignored it, it would go away. Don’t listen to Yaku talking to the coach or how the timbre of his voice makes his heart skip a beat or three. Don’t look at Yaku diving for the ball or how his pants stretch around his butt and well-toned legs. Don’t think about Yaku or—well, just don’t think about Yaku, period. 

It was impossible to avoid Yaku completely because neither of them would skip volleyball practice unless it was the apocalypse (and possibly not even then), but it was possible to keep their interaction minimal, nothing beyond passing the ball and saying the obligatory “nice receive.” It was suffocating, but conventional wisdom stated that good medicine was bitter, so Tetsurou swallowed it and believed the ache to be a sign that it was working, ignoring the warning echoed in the book he was reading—that the Dark Ages was dark not because there was no light but because people refused to see it. 

Thus he thought all was going according to plan until Kai sat down across from him at the lunch table one day and asked, “Did you get into a fight with Yaku?” 

After a coughing fit involving rice and milk, Tetsurou asked in return, “Wh-what makes you say that? Did Yaku say something?” And that seemed unbearably awful, the idea that Yaku would think ill of him. Anti-soulmates weren’t the same as archenemies, he’d concluded recently, but while he wasn’t supposed to fall in love with his anti-soulmate, he didn’t want to lose Yaku as a frie— _valuable teammate_ , because what they had was more complicated than friendship. 

“No,” said Kai. “He hasn’t said anything. I’m just concerned because the two of you haven’t spoken to each other this entire week.” 

“We... We spoke!” Tetsurou spluttered. “I told him ‘nice receive’ five times yesterday!” Yaku had also addressed him at the end of practice, but he’d panicked upon hearing his name and run after one of the third-years with a _let me help you with that, senpai!_

“That’s not what I meant,” Kai explained. “The two of you have been bickering constantly since we joined the club, so it’s noticeable and troubling when you stop doing that.” 

“But...” Tetsurou paused. “But that means we’re not fighting anymore, and that’s good, right?” 

Kai pursed his lips, unconvinced by Tetsurou’s rushed words and higher-than-usual pitch. “I’ll ask Yaku, then.” 

“I’ll patch things up with him!” Tetsurou declared, grabbing Kai’s sleeve from across the table. 

Except that was easy to say, difficult to do, if only because they hadn’t been fighting and there was nothing to patch up. He couldn’t exactly walk up to Yaku and admit he was in love with him, his anti-soulmate, so _could you please do something about it because I need to find my soulmate_. But Tetsurou liked challenges; and like every challenge he’d ever faced, he met it with utmost brilliance and grace. 

He scribbled “KICK ME” on a sticky note, lurked behind the bushes the next Monday morning until he saw Yaku approach the school gate, casually clapped the sticky note on Yaku’s back, and dashed off, yelling, “Last one to the gym has to buy the other one lunch today!” 

“Kuroo, you cheat,” Yaku said in between breaths outside the gym, hands on his knees. 

Tetsurou grinned, feeling like he could float away into the sky, knowing that Yaku still reacted to his provocations the way Yaku always did. He missed hearing Yaku’s voice, talking to him, looking at the tufts of brown hair on the crown of his head, seeing his knitted eyebrows, and just _being_ around Yaku. 

The KICK ME note brought him down to earth, however, and he was saved not by the bell but by the arrival of the rest of the team while Yaku silently studied the KICK ME note after taking off his jacket. Nothing was more terrifying than Yaku tearing off the note, throwing it into the trash, and continuing with morning practice as if it was nothing more than the act of flicking an insignificant bug from his clothes. 

Perhaps that part of the plan was not so brilliant. 

Hence Tetsurou was surprised when Yaku brought him yakisoba bread during lunch break. He preferred tuna onigiri, but one did not refuse Yaku’s generosity even if (especially since?) he hadn’t _really_ meant it when he’d announced that the loser had to buy the winner lunch (although he would gladly do it for Yaku twice over). He thanked Yaku, picked up the bread from the paper plate, and bit into it. 

It was laden with tabasco. 

After some yowling and scrambling for water to put out the fire in his mouth, he shot Yaku a distressed look. “I should’ve known something was up when you gave me this without its wrapping,” he whined. 

Yaku had sunk down beside him on the bench, face in one hand and shoulders shaking from laughter. Whether it was by chance or by choice, their shoulders were touching, and Tetsurou found that he couldn’t be angry at Yaku, not when he just wanted to hold Yaku tight and never let go. 

“It’s called payback,” Yaku said, beaming at him, and exchanged a wrapped yakisoba bread for the one on his plate before he could grumble _I’m never letting you buy me lunch again_. 

“That one’s safe to eat,” Yaku said as he took a bite out of the deadly one. “Can’t let you starve now, can I? This one’s actually not that bad.” 

Watching Yaku with horrified fascination, Tetsurou remarked, “You’re weird.” 

Yaku shoved his foot against Tetsurou’s, and Tetsurou shoved his foot back, and they jostled each other until they were pressed together, side by side. For a moment, it no longer mattered whether they were soulmates or anti-soulmates. It was bliss and the promise of perfection. 

Things progressed from there. An excuse to talk to Yaku— _let’s get lunch_. An excuse for physical contact— _let me help you stretch_. Eventually there were no more excuses: patting Yaku on the head (and getting a scowl in return), poking Yaku in the ribs (and getting a slap on his arm), draping his arm around Yaku’s shoulders (and getting a half-hearted attempt to shrug him off). 

Then one day, they were arguing over something trivial when Tetsurou was overcome by the urge to hug Yaku. He had no recollection of what led up to it, just that one moment he was picking on Yaku and the next he was hugging him, feeling his small frame tense and then relax. He buried his nose in Yaku’s hair, soft and still a little damp from the sweat after practice. In the surge of emotions, his brain latched onto one unknown and, heart racing, he blurted out, “Have you always seen the world in colors?” 

“What?” Yaku pulled away slightly to look up at him. “Who doesn’t?” 

If there was anything that was the opposite of clouds parting, lights shining, and angels singing, it would be that simple question. 

“Er...” Tetsurou glanced at Yaku but glanced away again. His arms began to fall away from Yaku, but he turned it into a motion to scratch the back of his head. “Well, I mean, how would I know that the red I see is the same as the red you see? Maybe your red is my black. You know?” 

Yaku gave him a flat stare. “Only you would think about something like that seriously.” 

His laugh sounded particularly forced to his own ears. If they weren’t soulmates, then what were they? The proverbial ships that pass in the night? 

Tetsurou never did figure it out. 

Things stayed the way they were. They still got lunch together—with Kai too sometimes. They still helped each other stretch—until they were second-years and occupied with their younger teammates. They still bickered endlessly—through nationals, past college entrance exams, at graduation. 

He still felt as if he couldn’t breathe when he thought about Yaku, three months into college, one roaming the streets of Tokyo and the other somewhere in Kyoto. It wasn’t Rio de Janeiro, the antipode of Tokyo, but every now and then, he couldn’t help but think that maybe it would’ve been better if his soulmate had been so far away that their paths never crossed—could never cross—in the first place. 

Who were soulmates? What were soulmates? 

If the coin landed heads up, he would give Yaku a call. It was tails. 

They say the coin never decides for you, just helps you realize what you really want. 

No unfair chances, no unfortunate circumstances. Just simple choices. 

There was a loud crash in the kitchen. Bokuto was trying to cook again. Tetsurou pocketed the coin and never made the call.

 

 

 


End file.
